u cy 



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Clje Ceadjerg ai % %%t" 



A LECTURE 

DELIVERED IN THE TOWN HALL, BOMBAY, 

AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOMBAY MECHANICS' 
INSTITUTION, 



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m 



AT THE 



SESSION 1866-67. 



BY 



THE BEY, JOHN PATON, 

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH. 



PRINTED FOR THE INSTITUTION. 



3Samfiag: 

PRINTED AT THE 

EDUCATION SOCIETY'S PRESS, BYCULLA. 



1867. 



Ss>J 



"CJjs fetxljcrs of % %Qtf 
A LECTURE 

DELIVERED IN THE TOWN HALL, BOMBAY, 

AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOMBAY MECHANICS' 
INSTITUTION, 

AT THE 

SESSION 1866-6^. 



THE REV, 

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN 


JOHN PATON, 

ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH. „--,_, 

* » ~ ** * > 


PRINTED FOR 


THE INSTITUTION. 



i 



Bomfiag: 

PRINTED AT THE 

EDUCATION SOCIETY'S PRESS, BYCULLA. 

1867. 






1-^,5^ 



Who loves not Knowledge ? "Who shall rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 

Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 

But ou her forehead sits a fire ; 

She sets her forward countenance, 
And leaps into the future chance 

Submitting all things to desire. 

Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain, 

She cannot fight the fear of Death. 
What is she, cut from Love and Faith, 
But some wild Pallas from the brain 

Of Demons ? fiery hot to burst 
All barriers in her onward race 
For power. let her know her place : 

She is the second, not the first. 

A higher hand must make her mild, 
If all be not in vain, and guide 
Her footsteps moving side by side 

With Wisdom like the younger child. 

For she is earthly, of the mind, 

But Wisdom heavenly, of the soul. 
O friend, who earnest to thy goal 

So early, leaving me behind, 

I would the great world grew like thee, 

Who grewest not alone in power 

And knowledge, but from hour to hour 

In reverence and in charity ! 

— Tennyson. 



THE TEACHERS OF THE AGE. 



" Disce aut discede." 
Learn or be off. 

The world is in a sense a great school, wherein men and 
women teach and learn. This does not seem a very exalted 
idea of the world we live in, bnt it is one from which a good 
deal may be learned. We are in school, either as teachers 
or scholars, or perhaps as an amalgam of both, like that 
hybrid creation of modern edncational systems the boy or 
girl monitor. 

Let us think of the Teachers in Schools. What crowds of 
thoughts in all manner of forms fling themselves on the mind 
as the words are spoken ! 

Teachers in Schools ! when we think of them cannot some 
of us recall the forms, the methods, and even the very 
words and tones of utterance, and expressions of countenance 
of men we loved and reverenced in the time of boyhood, 
long ago, men who humbly did their duty through many a 
weary year, teaching God's own truth to God's own children. 
Teachers in Schools ! who can tell their very-many-sidedness. 
Here you have the tiresome pedant, no-teacher called teacher, 
who addresses his unfortunate should-be scholars as Aristotle 
might have spoken to a young Renan had both lived in the 
time of Bacon, who is of roots, fathers, and catacomb litera- 
ture generally. Then you have the Gradgrind tutor of the 
very advanced school, dapper, well brushed, with painfully 
white wristbands, and a very white ferule which comes down, 
not by any means infrequently, rat-tat-tat on the lids of the 
little pitchers he is seeking to fill full of facts. Poor little 
pitchers ! 

Here you have the old crone who presides over the dame- 
school, who, as she knits her stocking, which seems to be of 
the everlasting-heel species, with tremulous accents teaches 



6 

the young Hodges and Nancies their spelling of words of two 
syllables through the long summer days. You can hear her 
through yon latticed window almost covered with honey- 
suckle :"Ba spells Ba, John Hodge. Yer feyther could 
spell Ba six months afore he were your age. Hey ho ! I 
mind o' teaching him his primer, and it's forty year agone 
sin' then. B a spells Ba, John Hodge/' 

Then you have lihe boarding-school mistress, with her 
philosophical theory of education, basis of music, Cockney 
French, Polish Italian, and Hamburg German, who advertises 
for pupils in the middle class, and undertakes to teach girls 
all accomplishments, how to get in and out of a carriage, and 
how to carry their trains at a court presentation.* 

Here you have the splendid rector, with his most advanced 
and truly scholarly system of humane training, carried out 
with every appliance, and by men in every way qualified for 
their high and ennobling work. 

Then you have Misther O'Skelpy, hedge schoolmaster, 
esquoire, whom you might hear in some fine spring morning 
addressing a careless pupil thus : — 

11 Now what's the lisson this morning, mi spalpeens ? 
Is'th the pluparfict of amo ? faith an' I luv the word, an' I 
du. Give the pluparfict of amo, will ye, that hid boy there ? 
Och, an' it's you, is'th it, Dinnis, thin till me did ye bring 
yer pate wid ye this luvly morning of spring ? ye didn't, 
didn't ye, Dinnis ? Faith, thin, I can't affoord to tache you 
the pluparfict of amo for nothing. Jist you git along to the 
bog wid ye, and fitch yer pate, and Dinnis — Dinnis, mind 
ye fitch one that's a thumper. Manetime, till Dinnis comes 
back, we'll decline pinna, a pin. I can't affoord to tache sich 
high Latin as the pluparfict of amo for nothing, mi darlins : 



* The following is a quotation from an advertisement cut from a 

newspaper last August : — Mesdemoiselles B will also be prepared to 

give lessons to ladies in Court Presentations ; it will not be necessary to 
bring trains, as they will be kept for the purpose." Could burlesque of 
education be carried further ? 



so you always remimber yer pates. The bigger the pates 
that ye bring the bigger the scholars I'll make uv ye. 
Eemimber yer pates, an' ye'll niver forgit the declinshun of 
the pluparfict of a?no. ,} 

Teachers in School ! what a mixed host of names comes 
up when we think of them — Socrates, Aristotle, and Mr. 
Squeers ; Doctor Samuel Johnson, Epicurus, and Ichabod 
Crane of Sleepy Hollow; Milton, Oliver Goldsmith, and 
Eugene Aram ; Dr. Arnold, Edward Irving, and Dominie 
Sampson, &c. 

What a mixture of names of teachers ! — good, bad ; 
devoted, faithful ; real, fictitious; past, present ; living, dead — 
dead, yet speaking. 

Do not laugh at this strange jumble of names, for just such 
a mixture as this is found in the great world-school, and 
we are either teachers or scholars in it — for the most part 
scholars. 

This definition of ourselves as scholars has a touch of the 
real fantastic in it, but it has a touch of the pathetic too. 

The world-school has its work and its play, its hard desks 
that rub elbows out, its copy-books in which men-boys and 
women-girls write sometimes fine copperplate, sometimes 
only strokes, and not seldom very crooked pothooks. It 
has its lessons blundered through, and its tasks mastered 
and laid away complete, its correct accounts and its blun- 
dered sums, which, however, will not submit to be blotted 
out, like a schoolboy's, with a sponge or a jacket-cuff. It 
has its rivalries, and oh ! they are bitter in their fierce envy, 
and its fights, too, often gone about con amove, as with the 
boys on the common. It has its birch, too, for the backs of 
the naughty, and a fooFs cap to set on the heads of the 
dunces withal. 

One needs no excuse in introducing a good quotation into 
an irregular discourse, so we will here read a part of one of 
Tom Hood's very touching and yet very funny poems about 



school. The lines quoted were the sparks that flared up into 
this lecture ; they are from a little poem called " Lines on a 
distant prospect of Clapham Academy" : — 

" Lo, there they scvamhle forth, and shout, 
And leap and, skip and mob about 

At play where we have played ; 
Some hop, some run (some fall), some twine 
Their crony arms ; some in the shine 

And some are in the shade. 



Some laugh and sing, some mope and weep, 
And wish their frugal sires w^uld keep 

Their only sons at home ; 
Some tease the future tense, and plan 
The full-grown doings of the man, 

And pant for years to come- 

" A foolish wish ! There's one at hoop ; 
And four at fives ; and five who stoop 

The marble taw to speed ; 
And one that curvets in and out, 
Reining his fellow-cob about : 

Would 1 were on his steed ! 

" Yet he would gladly halt and drop 
That boyish harness off to swop 

With this world's heavy van, 
To toil, to tug. O little fool, 
When thou canst be a horse at school, 

To wish to be a man ! 



Thy taws are brave ! Thy tops are rare ! 
Our tops are spun with coils of care, 

Our dumps are no delight ! 
The Elgin marbles are but tame, 
And 'tis at best a sorry game 

To flv the Muses' kite ! 



9 

Our hearts are dough, our heels are lead, 
Our topmost joys fall dull and dead, 

Like balls with no rebound ! 
And often with a faded eye 
We look behind and send a sigh 

Towards that merry ground ! 

Then be contented. Thou hast got 
The most of heaven in thy young lot, 

There's skyblue in thy cup ! 
Thou'lt find thy manhood all too fast 
Soon come, soon gone, and age at last 

A sorry breaking-up !" 

Well, well, Mr. Hood ; but we, having escaped from school, 
still do find ourselves in school, a very real and very stern 
school. Boys and girls though we be no longer, we are even 
yet but learning to be true men and women. 

We wish this evening to speak of some of the teachers in 
the great world-school, or, as we have called them, " The 
Teachers of the Age." 

By teachers of the age we do not mean the professors and 
schoolmasters only. We include them, but we mean a far 
larger class, to wit, a class including every one who is exer- 
cising a guiding or misguiding influence on others in this 
age. There is of a surety, then, no fear that our subject 
should be exhausted, for if we come to examine particularly 
into the matter we shall find that there is scarcely a man too 
ignorant or too insignificant to exert some influence on 
those about him, for good or ill. We cannot, of course, in 
one lecture travel over so vast a field as this, which includes 
all words and all actions, nor would it fulfil our object so to 
do. We mean only to speak of those teachers who are set- 
ting, who have set, or who ought to set, their impress on 
the age, for good or ill, in some specific or remarkable 
manner. 

Let us look for some of our teachers, then, and mark the 
effects and peculiarities of their teaching. 

2 T A 



10 

Of the Men op the Past as Teacheks of the Age. 

The wisdom of any age should be the sum of the wisdom 
of all past ages plus the power of the living wise men. The 
reason why it is never so is that the living wise men never 
start from the standpoint at which the dead wise left off. It 
is with painful effort, and an ever-continuing struggle with 
forgetfulness, that the scholar strives to utilize the wisdom 
of the past, and learn what the sages of old thought and 
did. The longer a man lives, and the more he thinks, the 
more he will lament the waste of the lore of those who are 
gone from earth. In every department of science and art we 
find ignorance of the past a cause of much useless theorizing, 
obstructive experiment, and grievous loss of time and 
energy, among nations, in commercial circles, in halls of 
learning, and in the cabinets of statesmen. From ignorance 
that the noble dead men — whose thoughts and whose hal- 
lowed dust alone remain to tell us what they were, and how 
they lived — pursued certain thought-lines and life-tracks 
which they, hopefully experimenting, proved to lead to that 
humiliating issue Nothing, how many men have trodden the 
same fruitless paths ? How often have experiments in gov- 
ernment been made and remade which a wider and deeper 
historic knowledge and more teachableness would have 
shown to be in vain ? How many chimerical inventions in 
mechanical arts have been made and made again, simply be- 
cause inventors have not been at the pains to learn what 
mechanical experimentalists had done before them ? How 
many times have ideas been broached in the books of the 
learned, ideas called <c advanced" in the canting jargon of the 
day, which are mere walking ghosts of ideas which have 
risen from their graves in Greece, Rome, Alexandria, Port 
Royal, Tubingen, Gotham, or Holywell Street, ideas which have 
been slain long long ago in the conflict with eternal truth ! 

"What hosts of idealistic resurrectionists are there, who 
mistake the mei*e ghost for a living entity! What repeti- 
tions of errors do we see in consequence ! Emperors and 
kings and statesmen make mistakes which have been madt--- 



11 

before and demonstrated to be fatal, as they might have seen 
had they known the contents of their countries' archives, or 
read and remembered the lessons of the books on their 
shelves ? What grave mistakes, too, do the churchmen make 
in their ignorance of the past doings of the churches ! How 
often before has a policy of spurious liberty — libertinism of 
thought, called liberty of thought — issued in infidelity, 
merged into anarchy, and resiled by the natural law of reac- ■ 
tions into mere formalism ! How often before has the policy 
of attention to the outward as essential to truth in worship 
developed itself into mere formalism, and become in the end 
a mere fossil religion, a dead shape, a no-religion in a mask 
called religion ! How often have communities rushed into 
public errors which have before shown their power for ill in 
producing effeminacy, a bastard luxury and ruin, sometimes- 
in a less and sometimes in a greater degree ! 

As we are prohibited from entering on religion or politics 
in lectures like this, we shall take a more defined example of 
what we mean from what may be termed mercantile his- 
tory. My illustration refers to circumstances which occurred 
in the year 1720, and to a certain great commercial city of 
the present day, and it shows the folly, if not the sin, of 
stopping the ears when our venerable teacher the Past would 
teach us. 

History tells us that in the year 1720 speculation painted 
its own portrait, a portrait resembling *a caricature, but 
which was not one. The picture was painted on the South 
Sea Bubble. Hogarth's famous etching " The Bubble*' was 
not more pathetically grotesque than the reality, and Swift's 
lines on the subject did no more than record an irony whose 
edge was steeled and made most cruelly cutting by what 
was, alas ! too real and too severely true. One or two extracts 
will give an idea of some of the things which took place in 
1720:—. 

' ' The English ' South Sea Scheme,' though originating in 
a purely patriotic motive, developed itself into a swindle 



12 

pure and simple. Almost everybody in the country caught 
this cholera morbus of cupidity. Poets, philosophers, di- 
vines, fashionable ladies, and hoary-headed aristocratic sen- 
sualists were infected with the disease. Pope dabbled in 
S. S. S. (South Sea Stock.) Lady Mary Wortley Montaguo 
was accused of cheating Ruremonde, the French wit, out 
of five hundred pounds' worth of stock. Ladies laid aside 
" ombre" and " bassette" to haunt Change Alley. Gay, 
the poet, stood to win enormous sums. He at one time 
imagined himself, as Pope did, to be lord of thousands, and 
characteristically refused to follow a friend's advice to real- 
ize at least enough to secure himself a clean shirt and a 
shoulder of mutton for every day for life. Gay persisted in 
holding, and lost all. ***** 

" The stock rose to thirteen hundred pounds' premium. 
* * * The rush to buy in became tremen- 

dous." A vulgar song of the day has it thus : — 

" Then stars and garters did appear 

Among the meaner rabble 
To buy, to sell, to see and hear 

The Jews and Gentiles squabble- 

"The greatest ladies thither came 

And plied in chariots daily. 
Or pawned their jewels for a sum 

To venture in the Alley." 

Dean Swift, in his coarse and incisively witty fashion, com- 
pared ' c Change Alley" to a gulf in the southern seas where 
multitudes of unfortunates were fishing. He says — 

" Subscribers here by thousands float, 
And jostle one another down, 
Each paddling in his leahy boat, 
And here they fish for gold, and drown. 

" Now buried in the depth below, 
Now mounting up to heaven again, 
They reel and stagger to and fro 
At their wits' end, like drunken men. 



13 

"Meantime, secure on Garraway's cliffs, 
A savage race by shipwreck fed 
Lie waiting for the foundered skiffs, 
And strip the bodies of the dead. " 

The early success of the S* S. S. produced a host of imi- 
tators. " Companies and projects of every description were 
formed. A thousand bubbles were daily blown into existence. 
Then was the Periwig Company, the Spanish Jackass Com- 
pany, a Quicksilver Fixation Company, a Company to make 
deal boards out of sawdust," &c. &c, and finally " A com- 
pany for carrying on an undertaking of great importance, 
but nobody to know what it is." 

The author who records this sarcastically adds — 

" Let not the reader be incredulous. This lastmentioned 
company, or rather the prospectus of it, was a great fact. 

" The man of genius who essayed this daring inroad upon 
public gullibility merely stated in his prospectus that the re- 
quired capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of 
one hundred pounds each, deposit two pounds per share. 
Each subscriber paying his deposit would be entitled to one 
hundred pounds per annum per share. How thi,s enormous 
profit was to be obtained he did not condescend at the time, 
nor indeed at any time, to inform them. He, however, 
promised that in a month full particulars would be announced, 
and a further call made for the remaining ninety-eight 
pounds of the subscription. Next morning at nine o'clock, 
the great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of 
people beset his door, and when he shut up, at three o'clock, 
he found that no less than one thousand shares had been sub- 
scribed for, and the deposits of two pounds per share paid. 
Thus in five hours he became the winner of two thousand 
pounds. He was contented with this venture. The same 
evening he set off for the continent, and was never heard of 
again." 

Here was the voice of a great practical teacher raised to 
proclaim to all coming time and to all rash speculators 
therein, " Beware, ' Ex nihilo nihil fit/ ' He that maketh 



14 

haste to be rich shall not be innocent/'' yet the men of the 
world have shut their ears often since then,, and, unheeding* 
of this great teacher of the past, have had their railway 
mania, their Potosi and Cornish mining manias, and their 
other muffin and crumpet company manias, down to this 
very day, wherein, in a certain city of the East, say 
Cottonopolis, wo have had our fine display of speculative 
fireworks, and its sequence of dark night, smell of powder 

expended, the ends of the rocket sticks, and and — ■ — 

and the bills to pay ! 

By all this roundabout reference to commercial history I 
mean simply to show that History is a great Teacher of the 
Present, and that we should listen to its lessons. We are 
getting so excessively smart in these days that we are above 
listening to the voices of the past. The past was slow. In 
the past days they had no railways and telegraphs. There 
were no Athenaeums , nor strikes, nor preference shares in 
those days. There was no Mr. Gladstone, nor Mr. John 
Bright. There were - no penny papers, and, above all, there 
were no Saturday Reviews. We are the people. Ours is 
the age of ages. The past, save now and then, was an age 
of what is technically called old-fogy ism. There were posi- 
tively boys and girls in those days. The gentlemen actually 
wore coats and the ladies bonnets. There were in these 
primeval times old-fashioned virtues called reverence and 
modesty, and a Quixotic kind of thing called pay-what-you- 
owe-ism. We are got above all this kind of antiquarianism 
now. Men-children are born into the world in court 
dresses and shoe-buckles, able at once to administer laws to 
whole provinces, or they arrive full-blown financiers with a 
day-book under one arm, a ledger under the other, and a 

pen behind the right ear. Women-children come well 

never mind them : there are no girls now. 

We are travelling ahead at express rate as a minimum. 
Now, Progress is good, but it must be sound and sure. 
It must be based on experience of all the Past. The very 
use of the past is to teach its lesson as a hoary-headed 



15 

preceptor to each succeeding present age. I do not say 
il imitate the past " — that would be to deny the progress of 
the ages — I say " learn from the past." Take the good out 
of it; put the bad out of it. As reasonable men, be taught 
thereby. When I hear the men who call themselves men 
of " advanced" ideas speaking of the words and actions of 
bygone years as folly I always think of a singular scene, 
which I will here describe. 

A new factory had just been built, and there was a grand 
demonstration at the opening of it. All the village assem- 
bled. There was a procession, a brass band, speeches, bad 
music, and plenty of noise of all kinds in the forenoon, and 
a dinner, speeches, more bad music, and a greater noise in 
the afternoon, &c. &c. 

At one end of the new factory, which was some four 
stories high, stood a long contractor's ladder, reaching up 
nearly to the topmost row of windows, and alongside of it 
was a waste-pipe which came down from the leads on the roof. 
A lot of young men began, one after another, to climb 
the ladder, and to try to make their way from it to the 
tonmost windows, to the manifest risk of their lives. After 
several had failed, a pert young tailor, in a very new 
suit of clothes, came out, and, laughing at them all as if they 
were a set of bunglers and cowards, declared that he would 
not only go up to the windows, but on to the roof itself. 

" Go it, Snip," cried the crowd, and up he went. 

He got to the top of the ladder, and thence on to the 
waste-pipe, and in a fit of braggadocio kicked away the 
ladder. 

From the ground it appeared but a step from the ladder- 
top to the house-top, and the pipe seemed a facile staircase ; 
but when he got up, and was fairly on the pipe, Master Snip 
found it a vastly more difficult thing to fulfil his boast than 
it had been to make it. At last he fairly stuck. You never 
saw a tailor of the advanced school in sadder plight, hang- 
ing as he was between heaven and earth, and clinging to his 



16 

pipe in mortal terror, with his new suit of nineteenth, 
century raiment all smeared with bright green paint off the 
pipe. 

" Come down, lad," cried an old old woman frantic with 
terror. 

" Can't," cried Snip in woeful tones that fell from the 
clouds like a prose parody on Mr. Longfellow's " Excelsior/' 

" Go on. Get up, can't ye ? Get to the top, " cried the 
men. 

" Ca-a-ant !" fell the accents of poor Snip again from the 
sky. 

" Just see here/' said the contractor's men one to another, 
as on the alarm's being given they ran round the corner, 
1 ' here's a meddlesome piece of chap flung our ladder down, 
and stuck to the wall like a kite nailed on a barn door. Hi ! 
you up there ! you just wait and hold on tight, till we tie a 
ten-foot piece on to our long ladder, and we'll be up with 
you, Mr. Meddlesome." 

It was done, and Snip was set on the house-top a wiser 
man, if not a better tailor. 

tf Next time you go to climb houses, Mr. Snip," said the 
oldest mason, " don't you kick away your ladder, mind you 
that." 

The moral of this is pretty evident. Don't try to get on 
and up by kicking away your ladder of past experience. 
You will neither get on nor up if you do, but will stick to 
the wall, like Mr. Snip the tailor. 

It: is by adding the short ladder of the present to the long 
ladder of the past that men get to the top. 

Study history. 

Make yours the lessons of the growth of nations, families, 
men, and men's work. Make yours the great thoughts of all 
the hoary past. 

Think of the magnificent lessons which may be learned from 
the histories of the mighty nations of old ! With what 



17 

voices speak the stories of the ancient powers,, Assyria, 
Egypt, Judah, Rome, Greece, or Venice with her sermons in 
fair stones ! How profitable in their stern, terse vehemence 
are the lessons read from Northern runes, from rough Danish 
sea-daring deeds, or from the many-sided, many-coloured 
stories from the history of our own loved islands of the 
Northern Sea ! How the tales of warlike and commercial 
adventure in the western hemisphere stir the hearts of men 
to this very hour. How touching the record of the deter- 
mination of the Pilgrim Fathers and their undaunted de- 
scendants, and how spirit-stirring the histories of the ancient 
Spanish conquests that come to us in tales of the sword and 
sail, from far Western islands, from the giant-hill countries of 
Mexico and Peru, and from that weird g-io-antic delta of the 
mighty Amazon ! Say, are not the records of the powers 
and heroisms of ancient days most mighty incentives to stir 
up the laggards, and rouse men from ease in these our 
modern days ? The past urges the nations on. 

To take another view of this subject. Has the past no 
lessons with its learning ? What Anakim sages has this 
round world seen ? What words of wisdom Avere written 
long, long ago ? In physical science progress has been so 
fast of late that none save the sages of very recent days can 
teach us much, if we except the grand lesson of humility, 
taught in man's esteemed-wise yet profoundly foolish 
guesses after truth ; but in mental science it is really a 
matter of doubt if we have made much progress since the 
days of Aristotle, or if any of our modern philosophers are 
a match for old Plato, though so many years have gone 
since he wrote his golden Greek. 

A great philosopher has said " I am afraid that very few 
substantial advances have been made in psychology since the 
days of Aristotle. Perhaps more people know something of 
the human mind than knew anything about it in his time, 
but I doubt whether any man of the present day knows 
more about it than he did." 

What a strange thing it would be to have Plato -and 

3 TA 



18 

Aristotle among us now ! How amazed they would be at our 
modern learning ! How they would stare at our mannikin 
sages who pass university examinations in the elements 
of all things ! I do not believe either of them could pass the 
matriculation examination of a certain Eastern university. 
Plato would certainly be " plucked" in universal history, 
and Aristotle in analysis of sentences. Fancy Plato and 
Aristotle cramming a Pinnock's Catechism, or trying to re- 
concile Mr. Buckle's Unphilosophy of History with facts, or 
attempting day after day for a week, and in vain, to com- 
prehend how it came to pass that the Spanish, the Scotch, 
and Mumbo-Jumbo all had the same religion. 

We are very far advanced in this age. We have got so 
deep into the profundity of learning that we are in danger 
of coming out at the other side. Our boys are philosophers, 
and consequently our men are very often scientific dotards. 
Too early bloom spoils the fruit. 

Before leaving this part of my subject, suffer me to remind 
you all — no matter what is your race, your religious creed, or 
your profession or trade — that from the past comes that 
teaching which must underlie, permeate, and transcend all 
human learning, human belief, and life that is true. From 
the past we receive the Revelation of the Will of God in all 
its power of sublime beauty and unsearchable wisdom, the 
guide of the immortal soul of man. Ever since the race of 
man took being, God has taught. He has been in his work 
and in his Revealed Will the Sovereign Teacher of man. 
Never let us forget this sacred truth. 

God has been our teacher; yet oh ! how little, how piti- 
fully little, have we, God's creatures, learned from God our 
Creator ! We have been in the school of God, and come out 
mere dunces. We need to walk humbly for this. No true 
wise-man will ever be proud, vain-glorious, conceited, 
opiniated, or contemptuous of the opinions of others. Only 
they who are essentially ignorant exhibit such characteristics 
es these. They do not know how much they do not know. 



19 

The greatest wise-man will be the quietest and most modest. 
He feels himself a poor simple child laboriously striving to 
learn in the school of the infinite wisdom and before the face 
of God. 

1 ' That which hath been is now, and that which is to be 
hath already been, and God requireth that which is past." 

It is by the study of the past, i.e., the culling of the 
experience of those who have gone before us, that we avoid 
becoming disciples in that most severe school of personal 
experience. We gain the whole experience of others with- 
out suffering what they suffered in gaining it. Roger 
Ascham (obit a.d. 1558) speaks about this in his work 
cc The Schoolmaster." He says—" Learning teacheth more 
in one year than experience in twenty, and learning teacheth 
safely when experience maketh more miserable than wise. 
He hazardeth sore that waxeth wise by experience. An un- 
happy master is he that is made cunning by shipwrecks, a 
miserable merchant is he that is neither rich nor wise but 
after some bankrouts. It is a costly wisdom that is bought 
by experience. He may be witty indeed, but ever like a swift 
runner that runneth fast out of his way and upon the night, 
he knoweth not whither ; and verily they be fewest in number 
that be happy or wise by unlearned experience." That is, 
much real suffering and loss that accompanies the acquire- 
ment of personal practical wisdom is avoided by learning 
the past experience of others. 

II. Of the Men op the Present as Teachers op the Age. 
1. Our Teachers the Workers. 

We are very apt to associate teaching with direct oral or 
written instruction, and to think that none but they who 
speak or write are teachers. 

In direct opposition to this idea I place in the forefront 
of the ranks of the teachers of the age the great workers of 
the age. 



20 

Now do not run away with tlie idea that you hare gut 
hold of an out-and-out disciple of Mr. Thomas Carlyle. Do 
not write me down dangerous, as if I were a mad dog, or 
rotten ice, or gunpowder. I am a believer in the sacredness 
of work, but it is in the sacredness of good work. I am also, 
however, a thorough believer in the unsacrcdness, in the 
devilishness, of bad work. A man who lives and dies and does 
nothing is no true man. He who does evil is a devil's pro- 
phet. He who does what is right — no matter what that is., 
if it bo the utmost setting-forth of the power that is in him, 
according to God's law for him — is a minister and setter-forth 
of Divine will to that amount, and no less and no more. 

Deeds are more powerful than words, and lives than doc- 
trines. A man who does what is really a great and heroic 
action produces more effect on his fellow-men than a whole 
volume of words about duty and heroism. 

Writers and speakers are largely workers and teachers,, 
as we shall presently illustrate, but none of them in anything 
Like so powerful a manner as the practical men, the workers 
— the intelligent workers, who with head and hand do their 
best in life for the glory of the Creator and the good of His- 
creatures. 

Those who have been the foremost in scientific, mechanical, 
and commercial pursuits, who have been the discoverers of 
great natural laws, and the inventors of practical applica- 
tions of these laws in the economics of the human race, all 
these have been, in a very large and exalted sense, teachers, 
and their lessons have been productive of much happiness and 
benefit to man. The life of a thoughtful, honest, diligent, 
earnest working-man, no matter what his rank, from a 
working king to a working hodman, is the finest sermon I 
know. He teaches his fellow-men more than any orator, 
bookmaker, or preacher ever did. He teaches by the vital- 
izing* power of life. The holy sympathies of life are his. 
Lives of such men as James Watt, Robert Stephenson, 
Arkwright, Brunei, Berkley, Cyrus Field, John Leyden.. 



21 

Captain Cook, Hugh Miller, Lord Herbert, Living-stone, 
Wellington, Howard, Luther, Bishop Tait of London, Arnold 
of Rugby, Chalmers, Robertson of Brighton, and Dr. James 
Robertson of Edinburgh, all speak in themselves, apart from 
the lessons in specific subjects which they proclaim. The 
character of the life has influenced, is influencing-, and will 
influence, the age. 

The great lessons taught by a truly great worker are of 
course, first, the lesson of his direct practical teaching : for 
example, lessons in engineering from a Stephenson, in fight- 
ing from a Wellington, in teaching* from an Arnold, in 
Christianizing from a Luther, &c. &c. ; but besides these 
there are many other lessons for life in them, lessons in 
sobriety, self-denial, intense application, oneness of purpose, 
continued diligence, and a wonderful humility. They have 
indeed been mightiest teachers of men, men of the truest 
and most prevailing influence, in their own days and the 
days more immediately following. 

Let me use Stephenson the engineer as an illustration of 
what I mean. He was born a worker, lived a worker, and 
died a world-renowned worker. 

He was born a colliery fireman's son. His first work was 
to mind a farmer's cows. Then he went to help to tend 
the pit-engine. Brought into contact with machinery, his 
mechanical genius was awakened. He wrought and studied 
till he came to be able to attend to an engine himself, and 
was famous in the district round as a pump " doctor/'' 

The question of motive power on tramways was then 
under earnest discussion among colliery proprietors and 
engineers. All kinds of ideas were abroad, stationary engines 
at intervals with hauling chains, locomotives with toothed 
wheels, atmospheric engines, railways on dead levels wrought 
by engines with toothed wheels, or atmospheric engines — a 
thousand and one Utopian ideas were afloat. Stephenson 
seized the two really practical ideas, steam locomotives with 
smooth or friction wheels. With them he believed that very 



22 

steep gradients -would form no obstacle to a very high rate of 
speed. He laboured and thought, experimented and failed, 
and experimented again till he succeeded. In spite of the 
tough obstruction of the vis inertice of vested interests in 
roads and coaches and canals, in the face of the ridicule 
of the world, this indomitable worker — dreamer of dreams 
he was called — made his impossible engine, constructed his 
impossible railway through Chat Moss from Liverpool to 
Manchester, and revolutionized the world with a hammer, a 
spade, and some boiling water. 

I have often thought of the contrast between Eobert 
Stephenson in his moleskin raiment, all sooty from the 
furnace smoke, putting soles on his future wife's carpet-shoes 
by the light of the pit-fire far north in " canny Northum- 
berland/'' and Stephenson settling by his opinion the railway 
question before a committee of the House of Commons. 

Some of you may remember a good story connected with 
his appearance before parliamentary committees. He was 
asked by a pompous M. P., who, I doubt not, thought he was 
dealing a death-blow to railways, " Do you not think, Mr. 
Stephenson, that in the event of such a train as that you 
speak of, travelling at the rate of fifty miles an hour, 
meeting a stray cow on the line the consequences would be 
very terrible V " Indeed," said Stephenson, in his rough 
Northumberland dialect, " I do think the consequences would 
be vary tarrible indeed for the coo." 

All this while he was teaching his race a lesson, of the 
effect of which we cannot even yet guess the full import, 
either in its mechanical, commercial, political, social, moral, 
or religious aspects. He was teaching how to send know- 
ledge and civilization over the earth with giant speed, and 
placing nations in close contact which a few years before 
were separated from each other by half a world. 

In every working man who is diligently doing his duty to 
God or man I would recognize a teacher of his age, influ- 
ential according to the measure of his power. 



23 

2. Our Teachers the Authors, including Poet&, Critics, 
and Lecturers. 

It were a waste of words to adduce proof of the teaching 
influence of literature. Let us then, simply noting that the 
influence of books is greater now than it ever was before, and 
that it is increasing daily , a fact arising from the increase in 
the number of publications and readers, proceed to notice a 
few of the more prominent peculiarities of our Teachers the 
Authors. 

To begin, let us say a few words about our newspapers, 
which have in this age a gigantic power. 

Those civilized men who do not take newspapers are 
curiosities. There must be some such, but they find a place 
most likely in the " shows" of Barnum and Artemus Ward 
with other natural curiosities. Newspapers have, I believe, 
done more to educate the world than all the books on 
science, philosophy, morals, and religion, put together 
(always excepting the Bible, which is out of the category of 
ordinary books, being God's Word) . 

They have told the great mass of mankind what their 
race was doing, thinking, saying, the round world over, and 
for one reader a book has, a newspaper has its thousands. 

Dean Alford recently stigmatized newspapers as cc false 
guides," in his lectures before the young Men's Christian 
Association at Exeter Hall, London. If the reports of what 
he said are correct, he went too far. He seems to have con- 
fused a part with the whole. Because some newspapers are 
false guides it no more follows that all are, than it follows 
that all deans are witty because Dean Swift was, or that all 
prebends are men of eminent talent because Sydney Smith 
was. 

There are, of course, newspapers good, bad, and indif- 
ferent. There are articles in them of which the dean's cen- 
sure is undoubtedly true when he says they are written ' ' by 
men who if their names were attached to the articles would 



24 

be received with shouts of derision." There are doubtless 
papers which pander to man's worst tastes. There are those 
which feed the bale-fires of party-strife. There are those 
which assume a most ludicrous air of egotistic infallibility. 
But over against these we may set others, which speak the 
truth in love, defend the right, advance knowledge, and 
which are written by men who, though writing anonymously, 
are men whose intellects are equal to any, and whose love of 
truth and right is unimpeachable. 

One danger from the press is that many men think it 
infallible. Among the people one meets are many who swear 
by their newspapers. In politics they are Nosier-pwperites . 
In church politics they are the same. They are the same in 
their Opinions of men, women, books, and things. Their 
opinion on the war or the peace or panic is that of some 
county-town " Thunderer." Their discontent is that of the 
village " Friday Growl/' which may mean simply this, that 
they have handed the key of their judgment over to some 
briefless lawyer, or some half-educated cobbler with a 
grievance, and the " Rights of Man" on his shelf. The print- 
ing press is not a guarantee for infallibility. Each opinion 
in each article is simply the opinion of one other man. 
Printing the 'opinion does nothing to make the opinion 
better or worse. Guarding ourselves against the fascination 
of print and the mysterious influence of the editorial ' c we," 
let us meet our teachers the newspapers, and learn their 
message, as of the great working heralds of civilization and 
knowledge. 

What has been said of newspapers may be said of maga- 
zines and books. In some senses magazines and books 
have a greater influence than newspapers, though infinitely 
fewer in number. The opinions which authors give to the 
world in them are more deliberate, and in books especially 
are generally given under the author's true name, which 
is a guarantee for sincerity at least, and a declaration that he 
is ready to peril his reputation on his printed utterances. 
Besides this, a book is read deliberately, and lies on the 



25 

library table or is set up on the shelves, to be referred to 
again, and read and re-read, while the newspaper is for the 
■day and of the day. 

Oar teachers the books have a great influence over us, 
more than many of us imagine- If a man is an habitual 
reader his books are largely his companions. He has his 
■circle of friends, too, in his study, a circle of friends often 
more satisfactory than his personal friends, for they don't 
forsake him if the sun leaves his side of the hedge, or his 
shares turn out waste paper. They don't speak ill of him 
behind his back, or forget him if he is out of sight. They 
don't want to be quiet when he wants to make a noise, or 
to be noisy when he wants to be quiet. They accept praise 
without giving themselves airs, and, above all, suffer any 
■amount of abuse without speaking a single word in reply. 
You may carry them with you where you please, and desert 
them as long as ever you like, and yet after all they are 
ready to smile on you, laugh with you, weep with you, 
argue with you, cheer and teach you, just as they did before. 

An individual's reading tends very largely indeed to 
modify his character. A elever book may effect a radical 
change in a man's character, it may start him on a course 
of ruin, or may lead him into ways of prosperity and joy. 

The effect of a single author's writings, and even of 
single book, is sometimes very wonderful. A few common 
examples may not lack interest. 

Byron's poetry bit the world with a gripe like that of a 
mad dog. All sorts of people became Byronic, and took to 
raving, moaning, swimming impossible distances, seducing, 
.cursing the world, turning down big shirt-collars, and get- 
ting as near the devil as they could. 

Sir Walter Scott's " Lady of the Lake," " Lay of the 
Last Minstrel," and his other Scottish poetry filled Scotland 
with tourists from all quarters of the globe, and really be- 
came the means of changing the very habits of the people in 
whole districts., by creating a desire for new routes, and thus 

4 T A 



26 

leading to the formation of new roads, which in time fixed 
the tracks of commerce, and eventually developed new com- 
mercial enterprises and fixed new centres for trade. 

Hood's " Song of the Shirt" did an infinite deal to arouse 
and stimulate philanthropic efforts in London and the world, 

Mr. Dickens' " Nicholas Nickleby" finished the career of 
many a Yorkshire schoolmaster. . 

The writings of Arnold of Rugby initiated a more enlight- 
ened system of high-class education. 

Mr. Ruskin's finical ideas, as exhibited in many of his 
works on Art, gave Pre-Raphaelitism a place, to the manifest 
disfigurement of our galleries of modern painting. The 
Reverend F. W. Robertson's writings have changed the 
current of English theology. 

Mr. Tennyson's two leading characteristics are influencing 
he literature of the day very largely. These are his charac- 
teristics of indefiniteness in his ideas of theology, philo- 
sophy, and moral science, and his adjectivity of style, which, 
though in his case it ascends to the height of beautiful word- 
painting, in others descends to a mere heaping of epithets. 
Indefiniteness and wordiness, mistaken for liberality of senti- 
ment, depth of thought, and sublimity of style, are unfortu- 
nately growing features in our literature. The peculiarities 
of Tennyson are not a little to blame for both, and the fasci- 
nation of genius magnifies the evil. 

In such works and portions of works we see produced 
certain evident effects. Those I have mentioned are great 
works, evidencing high mental power, but there is special 
reason why we should attend to the working of this prin- 
ciple in these days. There are whole classes of books which 
are directly teaching vice. We refer to " sensational''' 
fiction and poetry. This style of writing is producing very 
grievous effects visibly before us. Even novels called first- 
class, and passing under misleading and enticing titles, de- 
rive their interest from records of crime, and their plots are 
the mere evolvings of the vices of coteries of vicious men 



27 

and vicious classes of society. I quote as instances novels 
not accounted bad, and which may be seen on drawing-room 
tables and in the hands of ladies — " Paul Ferroll," " Lady 
Audley's Secret," " Recommended to Mercy," and even 
" Armadale." 

There is a still worse class, imitations of French «novels, 
and those which are unblUshingly immoral, and which many 
Who do read them would not confess to have read. These 
are the cheapest of all books of fiction, and they are pro- 
ducing great ills among the young and thoughtless, and 
those who cannot afford more costly books. They blunt 
right moral feeling. They sap the true spirit of manliness, 
which should be like Una for its purity and like Una's lion 
for its strength. A taste for such reading is utterly apart 
from the character of the true gentleman. 

There are some magazines which I always make a point 
of speaking against, whenever I get an opportunity. They 
are of the same class as those books of which I have been 
speaking. Chief representatives of the class are " Reynolds' 
Miscellany," " The London Journal," and " The Welcome 
truest." 

I know that the two first of these are great favourites, 
and that they have a very large circulation. They are 
powerful teachers, bnt they are not true teachers. Their 
influence is not healthy. They teach a false philosophy 
of life. They pervert men's and women's ideas of the 
source of true happiness. They familiarize the mind with 
folly and crime, and treat of such things as murder, theft, 
perjury, bigamy, adultery, seduction, gambling, and the like. 
They introduce young readers to the jail, the casino, the 
gallery of the " penny gaff," the ring, the hell, the thieves' 
quarters, city dens of vice, and the dwellings of the magni- 
ficently immoral. My hearers, members of the Mechanics' 
Institute of Bombay, men with wives and daughters and 
homes, put away such poisonous stuff from your libraries 
and your houses. There is truly mental and moral poison 



heading. Poison not your own minds with such dangerous 
material. Lay not such temptation in the way of others. 
Have we not enough real vice and crime and folly in actual 
life, without creating more in fiction ? Is there not danger 
enough of our being contaminated by contact with real crime, 
that we must use records of crimes that never were, to sully 
the minds of our boys and girls, and our own ? Such read- 
ing should be labelled " Elixir of Dastiness," u Poison for 
minds/' or " Death for souls." He who doses himself with 
it is a mental and moral suicide. 

" What twaddle is here !" I think I hear my friencl 
A. D. Vance, Esquire, to say, " What pulpit girlishness of 
sentiment ! A true man can go anywhere and read any- 
thing, and take no hurt." Good, my dear Vance, as far as- 
that last expression goes, but what has that to do with our' 
argument ? A true man, that is, we take it, a perfect man,, 
a thoroughly manly person, can read anything and take no 
harm, and we will give him as many bad books as ever he 
chooses to read, and that will not be many, we trow, for we 
shrewdly suspect that he will not choose to read any. But 
what may this have to do with the subject ? Can you pro- 
duce your true man, your perfectly manly person ? We 
are not aware of the existence of this personage, and should 
like to see him. Till he is forthcoming, suppose we label 
the works of which we have been speaking " Literature for 
the perfect/' and lay them aside as not for us. 

Words are great deceivers. It is easy to talk (l cant' y 
about manliness, perfection, and the like, but it is reality with 
which we have to do, and not day-dreams. The truth is that 
men are not perfect, and that men's hearts have an affinity 
for evil, and their minds a natural leaning to bad ideas.. 
Bad books, in common with all evil, must therefore pro- 
duce bad effects as long as men are what they are. The 
theory of pure manliness is very beautiful, but it must not 
be allowed to take the place of the truth, seen and tangible,- 
that man i,5 now very imperfect, and very easily seduced 
into sin. 



29 

The best way to get out of this temptation as regards 
books is to keep out of it. If such reading as this hurts all 
but the perfect, and if they are to be allowed to indulge in 
it because they can read anything, the publication of such- 
works may be allowed to cease at once, for a true man will 
not have anything to do with them. The very fact that 
such literature is demanded in the book-marts proves that 
man is far from perfect, and if he is so such literature 
will do him mental and moral injury. Shun all bad books. 

Our teachers the critics are in great power in this age, if 
We take them at their own estimate. If their teaching 
power equals in any degree the noise they make about it,, 
it must be tremendous. What oracles they are ! What 
rhapsodies pour at times from their frenzied lips! How 
they lash the follies of the age, till the air about them is 
filled with hideous howlings ! What wisdom, hid from ordi- 
inary mortals., is theirs ! 

It is sometimes a most amusing sight to see a critic of the 
reviewer school get hold of a great and noble book. Like a 
very small pug dog when an elephant comes along the road, 
he walks round it and round it with a kind of patronizing 
snarl, as much as to say " What a very big beast you are, to 
be sure, but what an ugly one ! Would you not be better 
without that horrid trunk of yours, and that funny little 
apology for a tail ? You are quite an. anachronism too. You 
should have lived with the palseosaurus and the ichthyosaurus, 
among the antediluvians j and would you not be better with 
these tusks of yours tucked on behind, and would you not look 
better if they were painted a fine mauve ? Just look at me. 
What a contrast there is now between us ! and, I suppose 
you are aware_, I am a perfect model of what a modern 
beast of respectability should be— just look at my beautiful 
proportions, my pug nose and band}?' legs, and gestketically- 
cut tail and trimmed ears/'' Then round and round the 
elephant the self-complacent little pug performs his amusing 
antics — yaff ! yaff yaff ! 



30 

Pure and intelligent criticism is a noble art, and is one of 
the bulwarks of the truth. By it truth is separated from 
error, and the grain of wisdom from the chaff of folly. It 
is to the world of letters what the furnace is to the refiner, 
or the winnowing machine to the farmer. But pure and 
intelligent criticism is a rare thing, and many people mistake 
a false criticism for the true, and take the critic's opinions 
of things in place of thinking for themselves, and the re- 
viewer's opinions in place of reading for themselves. Hence 
the need of caution in accepting critical opinion or the 
reviewers' notions. Reviewing is become a trade, and by 
criticism a reputation for learning is easily obtained. 

Saturday has its responsibilities. The reviews must be' 
filled every quarter, every month, or every week, to suit 
the taste of their readers. 'This commercial fact alone 
should put us on our guard in accepting the teaching of the 
critics. While some reviews are pure teachers of pure truth, 
others are in the pay of the bookselling trade, and write up 
the works which issue from particular presses, and write 
down those which come forth from others. Some are i: free- 
thinking," and sneer at every book written by those who be- 
lieve in fixed principles. Some are " orthodox," and think 
it their duty to hunt down the work of every one who has 
ever in the course of his career exhibited the faintest scin- 
tillation of original genius. Some are Cockney, and snarl at 
the heels of those writers whose hapjoy lot has not been cast 
within the sound of Bow Bells. Some " run amuck" at the 
" objective," some at the " " subjective." Some play the 
rogue's march at the heels of every Whig, and some at the 
heels of every Tory. You will get a critique on some fresh 
poem written by a man who knows about as much of poetry 
as a hippopotamus knows of the art of photography, or a 
disquisition on logic from some college youth who has just 
mastered the Port Royal logic, and thinks himself a young 
Whately. Or, worst of all, you will get the opinions on all 
things of some dilettante wiseman who thinks himself a 
heaven-born genius sent into this world to keep it right 



31 

generally, but chiefly to direct the small amount of intellect 
which may chance to be found in it over and above his own, 
and who has somehow or other managed to get upon the 
editor's lounge. 

Over a cigar and a cup of coffee he will settle for us, in 
a column and a half, the state policy of an empire, the com- 
mercial tactics of a great city, the theology of a race, the 
truth or falsehood of the last dozen works on Sanscrit letters 
geology, botany, or astronomy, &c. &c. We have often 
wondered at the universality of some of our polyglot philo- 
sophers of the review school, and tried to discover how it 
was that, appearing to know so much, they in reality knew 
next to nothing at all. However, there is a place for every- 
thing in nature, and Nature hath framed strange fellows in 
her time. 

fl Nature fits all her children with something to do. 

He who would write and can't write can surely review, 

Can set up a small booth as critic, and sell us his 

Petty conceits and his pettier jealousies. 

Thus a lawyer's apprentice just out of his teens 

Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines. 

Having read Johnson's " Lives of the Poets" half through, 

There's nothing on earth he's not competent to : 

He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles, 

He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles. 

It matters not whether he blame or commend, 

If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend. 

Let an author but write what's above his poor scope. 

And he'll go to work gravely and twist up a rope, 

And, inviting the world to see punishment done, 

Hang himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun. 

'Tis delightful to see when a man comes along 

Who has anything in him peculiar and strong, 

Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gun-deck at him, 

And make as he passes its furious peck at him." 

Let us be more independent in our judgments on authors 
and workers. Let us think for ourselves, and not pin our 
faith on what any party review says in religion or philosophy, 
morals, literature, or assthetics. Let us seekthe fountain-heads 



32 

of learning, and read for ourselves the great works of the day. 
Review-reading is one great cause of the smattering we see 
in these days. No really learned and conscientious scholar 
will ever read the review of a work and make up his mind 
on the question of its merits without reading the work itself- 
To take reviewers' opinions and convert them into our own 
is unfair to the author and unfair to ourselves. We must 
know the text before we can judge of the sermon. We must 
know the work reviewed before we are in a position to judge 
of the review. We should suffer writers to speak for them- 
selves, and not take their utterances as distorted by others. 
Blind reading of criticism does grievous ill, just as intelli- 
gent reading of the works of great men, combined with the 
study of what the critics say of them is the finest mental 
exercise. 

A word or two about our teachers the lecturers will con- 
clude this part of my subject. 

li They who live in glasshouses should not throw stones/' 
I hear some one say. Well, never mind ; a crash of glass 
will relieve a dull monotony : let the stones come. 

Soberly : what is the good of the modern invention of 
popular lecturing ? Does it do any good to anybody ? 

Viewed from the standpoint of the lecturer the invention 
has a totally different aspect from that which it bears to the 
audience. The lecturer is expected to take up and exhaust 
some subject in an hour, to boil down a science or two and 
give the essence of them ; to give an hour's extract-of-book 
in such a way as at once to instruct and amuse. The funnier 
the extract is the better. This being the case, two tempta- 
tions beset the lecturer, and led by them he either makes his 
lecture so practical as regards his facts that it is a mere far- 
rago, a bundle of facts, the dry skeleton backbone of some 
" ology," or he goes to the opposite extreme, and makes his 
lecture a mere declamation. 

It is a terrible thing, I assure you, to get one of those 
neat official letters which begin " The Directors of the 
Institute of hope that will favour them with a 



33 

lecture this season," &c. Sometimes it involves the exhu- 
mation of some brown volume (manuscript) of forgotten lore. 
Sometimes it involves many hours' uncertainty as to the 
subject to be descanted on, and the composition of an entirely 
new disquisition amid all the doubts arising from some such 
questions as " Will it do ?" " is it interesting ?" " will it 
teach ?" " will it be soporific V and the like. I am afraid 
that many of us lecturers are sad smatterers, but if people 
will have lectures they must take what they can get, and be 
thankful. My friend Mr. Vin. E. Gar says that the reason 
why people like lectures is that man in the aggregate has 
a natural inclination to take pleasure in seeing any given 
individual man making a fool of himself ! Mr. Gar is a 
great philosopher, so you may take his opinion at its worth, 
and without any criticism of mine. 

I shall here give two extracts from American authors 
about lecturing. The first is from the " Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table : or Every Man his own Boswell ;" by Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, a most genial author. It is in some re- 
marks about " averages" that he introduces the subject : — 
" An average, which I meant to speak about, is one of the most extraor- 
dinary subjects of observation and study. It is awful in its uniformitj', in 
its automatic necessity of action. Two communities of ants or bees are 
exactly alike in all their actions, so far as we can see. Two Lyceum 
assemblies of five hundred each are so nearly alike that they are absolutely 
^indistinguishable in many cases by any definite mark, and there is nothing 
but place and time by which one can tell the remarkably intelligent 
audience of a town in New York or Ohio from one in any New England 
town of similar size. Of course, if any principle of selection has come in, as 
in those special associations of young men which are common in cities, 
it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. But let there be no such 
interfering circumstances, and one knows pretty well even the look the 
audience will have, before he goes in. Front seats, a few old folks, 
shiny-headed, slant up best ear towards the speaker, drop off asleep after a 
while, when the air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright 
women's-faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but towards 
the front ; pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that. Here and there 
a countenance sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones 
scattered about. An indefinite number of pairs of young people, happy 
but not always very attentive. Boys in the back-ground, more or less 
5 T A 



34 

quiet. Dull faces, here, there — in how many places ! I don't say dull 
people, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. 
They are what kill the lecturer. The negative faces with their vacuous and 
stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him ; that is the 
chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. They 
render latent any amount of vital caloric. 

" Out of all these vaiious elements the audience is generated — a great 
compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen as any two 
mammals of the species are like each other. Each audience laughs and 
each cries in just the same place of your lecture, that is, if you make one 
laugh or cry you make all. Even those little indescribable movements 
which a lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver notices his horse 
cocking his ears, are sure to come in exactly the same place of your lec- 
ture always. I declare to you that, as the monk said about the picture in 
the convent, that he sometimes thought the living tenements were the 
shadows, and the painted pictures the realities, I have sometimes felt as 
if I were a wandering spirit, and the great unchanging multivertebrate 
which I faced night after night was one ever-listening animal, which 
writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, 
turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed 
with my last drowsy incantation." 

Another American author laments in pathetic language 
that popular lectures have usurped the show business. He 
says in his touching vulgar dialect — ■ 

" Individ ooals who git hard up embark in the lecturin bizness. They 
cram theirselves with hi souudin frazis, frizzle up their hair, and git 
trusted for a soot of black close, and cum out to lectur at 50 dollars a pop. 
They aint overstocked with brains, but they hev brass enuff to make suf- 
fishunt kittles to bile all the sope that will be required by the ensooin 
sixteen generations. Peple flock to hear urn in krowds. The men go 
because its poplar, and the wimin folks go to see what other wimin folks 
hev on. When its over, the lecturer goze and regales hisself with oysters 
and sich, while the peple say ' What a charmin lectur that air was,' 
etsettevy, etsettery, when 9 out of 10 of um dont hev no more idee 
what the lecturer said than my kangaroo has of the seventh speer of 
hevun." 

Whether our American cousins merely pohe fun here at 
lecturers and audiences, or whether their estimate is correct, 
I leave you to judge, but having fallen on the subject I can- 
not help saying a few words about the use and abuse of the 
teaching of lectures. They are part and parcel of that 



35 

intellectual movement which has developed itself in people's 
libraries, atheuasunis, book clubs, mechanics' institutes, and 
the like. By themselves they are almost useless. They 
attain their true use only when in their proper position rela- 
tive to other things. They are not of use as teaching any 
science absolutely or exhaustively, nor in rearing up a 
generation of royal-road wise-men, who would remain mere 
smatterers, and nothing else, to the end. But they 
are of use as affording an impetus to study, to reading, 
and thought. Many a young man has, I believe, been led to 
begin a profitable course of reading, or the study of some 
specific department of science, by an interesting course of 
lectures, or even by one lecture. 

They are of use, too, in exhibiting the sympathetic vitality 
of learning. It is a difficult thing for many men to keep 
persistently at work in the closet on any particular science 
or branch of science, but if they can come out of their shell as 
it were, and feel that they have thoughts and aspirations and 
difficulties like other men, and if they are brought in con- 
tact with them when speaking of matters which are mutually 
interesting, the issue of the contact is like that of steel with 
flint. Fire, a spark of new zeal, is the consequence, and 
the solitary student is cheered on his way. A lecture on 
any subject is in this sense an excitant of vitality. A lec- 
ture is also good in marking out tracks for others, for the 
young, or for such as have but few means of acquiring 
learning, and few books, and who may therefore reap lasting 
benefit from even an hour's simple conversation with one who 
knows more than they do. A lecture, to fulfil its object, 
should not, therefore, be treated as an amusement merely, a 
severer kind of entertainment compatible with the views 
of those who cannot join in the frivolity of the theatre, the 
casino, or the ballroom. It should always be treated as a 
possible means of arousing thought. What can I learn from 
the words he has uttered ? should be our test question when 
brought into contact with our teachers the lecturers. 

It is taking' the mere amusement view of lectures that 



36 

leads the author of " Philip Van Artevelde," in his " Eve 
of the Conquest," to put the lecture into the place previ- 
ously occupied by the Maypole, and to lament over our pre- 
sent austerity. He sings — 

Oh England ! ' merry England' styled of yore, 
Where is thy mirth ? thy jocund laughter where ? 
The sweat of labour on the brow of care 

Makes a mute answer ; driven from every door, 
The maypole cheers the village green no more, 
Nor harvest-home, nor Christmas mummers rare. 
The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs ; 
And of the learned, which, with all his lore, 
Has leisure to be wise ?" 

He who "■ sighs" over his lecture, and thinks it dull be- 
cause it is not a maypole or a Christmas mumming, will not 
agree with me that a lecturer should be a teacher. He and 
Mr. Henry Taylor may await the advent of " leisure to be 
wise ! " 

III. Our Teachers the Helots. 

The Spartans used to make their slaves, the descendants 
of the people of Helos, drunk, to deter their children from 
the degrading vice of drunknness. They thought that if 
their children saw the slaves making grotesque fools of 
themselves, and exhibiting the brute that was in them, 
they would shun for ever practices which could so unman 
humanity. 

Without animadverting on the morality of this method of 
training, we simply take the fact from amid many connected 
with the history of education, and desire to point out that 
in this day there are many Helots who, without our making 
them intoxicated, are daily ready to teach us many very 
practical lessons if we could only bring ourselves to learn 
them. 

The man who bungles his work teaches every one who sees 
his bungled work not to do likewise. The man who is always 
scheming, and whose schemes never succeed, teaches all 



37 

who are cognizant of his chimerical plans to keep clear of 
the like. The man who is always speaking and writing at 
random, and who is therefore constantly rnnning into mis- 
takes, warns all who know him not to exhibit their igno- 
rance,, as he does. The man who is guilty of making false 
or exag'gerated statements warns every one off his dangerous 
ground. The drunkard, with his reeling gait and sodden 
eye, and his final lurch into the nearest ditch, surely 
teaches all who see him to shun the siren rice that can thus 
bewitch out of man all that is manly, and leave but the 
brute dregs behind. Every man who is guilty of sin should 
be looked on as a teacher uttering forcible words of warn- 
ing to the world. I am far from going the length to 
which Pope went in his famous lines — 

" Vice is a monster of such frightful mien 
That to he hated needs but to be seen." 

What he states as a fact that is, I state as something that 
ought to be, a thing which we should all strive to bring to 
pass. 

Often may we have wished with Burns to know how we 
appear to others : you know his quaint lines : — 

" O wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as others see us ! 
It wad frae mony a blunder free us 

And foolish notion. 
What airs in dress an' gait wad leave us, 

And e'en devotion. " 

There is no power that can do this ; but man is man's 
mirror, and we can all, if we choose, make use of our eyes 
and our common sense, and when we see men exhibiting 
their sins and follies we can say " Thus I appear when I sin, 
thus I appear when I play the fool." 

Let the Helots who have made themselves drunken with 
th.3 wine of the grapes of vice, and who have once too often 
quaffed the chalice of folly, be our teachers. Their lesson is 
fearfully real; let us lose no sentence of it. The lessons of 



38 

life are few enough, and life itself is short enough, for our 
education in truth. We cannot afford to lose anything that 
may make us wiser or better men. 



Thus I have attempted to speak of a very few of our 
teachers, their powers, their offences, functions, and their 
failings. What are our duties in relation to these our 
teachers ? We are learners ; how are we learning ? Are we 
using aright the means at our disposal to make us wiser ? 
Are we earnestly educating ourselves, or are we content in- 
tellectually to remain just as we are ? Intellectual indiffer- 
ence is still, alas ! too prevalent. Men will not suffer them- 
selves to be fired by the sympathies of higher lives, and will 
not allow their thoughts to be lifted by the power of the 
thoughts of others who are higher than they. Which of us 
is what he might be if he had learned all he might have 
learned ? Who is there among us who knows all he might 
have known ? Have we all learned all that the great human 
teachers have power to teach ? Have we all learned all 
that the greatest teacher, God, is willing to teach ? I fear 
it is not so. We have neglected dutjt in this respect. Let 
us rise to our duties and seize our precious privileges. 

There are men among us who . could lead us far upward 
and onward, toward the infinite wisdom, and we have not 
learned as we might. No matter what is our present position, 
from every possible teacher let us seek to learn somewhat 
more than we know at present of the good, the beautiful, the 
true. Let us live to learn, and thus learn to live. He that 
rests contented with his present knowledge has flung aside 
one of man's noblest attributes, that ambition which should 
lead him ever to seek a higher knowledge, a wisdom and a 
truth which is above and beyond, and not attained as yet, 
and which even the eternal world will see gloriously pro- 
gressing on a glorious way. 

A poet has used a beautiful natural illustration to teach 



39 

us somewhat about this ; it is borrowed from the chambered 
nautilus : — 

This is the ship of peavl which poets feign 

Sails the uu shadowed main, 

That venturous havk that flings 
On the sweet summer winds its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl, 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil *, 

Still as the spiral grew 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft steps its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is borne 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn 

While on mine ear it rings 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings 

' Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.' " 



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